Archive for new york city

What's going on in the Big Apple? There must be something foul in the water. Just this week alone, there have been three, count 'em three bizarre, outrageous and unprovoked cop shootings. Oh, and all of these cops were drunk. So maybe if there is something with the water, it's the water-back chaser for the scotch and sodas.

It's not just pedestrians who are victims of these drunken outbreaks. One inebriated cop even winged his partner.

NYPD officers apparently can't stop getting drunk and shooting people: Just before midnight Tuesday, Officer Brendan Cronin allegedly pulled up to a stop light in Pelham, N.Y. and fired 13 shots at a stranger's car, striking the man six times.

That's not good.

Meanwhile, outside a strip club in Somerset, N.J., NYPD Sgt. Wanda Anthony allegedly opened fire at a car containing her ex-boyfriend and his new girlfriend. Neither was hit, and Anthony was later pulled over and charged with DWI.

That's not good either. But fortunately for Wanda, she was only sited for DWI. Somehow the opening fire on two civilians sitting in a car doesn't rise to a higher level of crime. Good thing she wasn't so drunk she resorted to "revenge porn." She might have attacked and screwed her ex-boyfriend to death.

And finally, well, hopefully finally... The week's not over yet:

The NYPD's great week of publicity continues: Thursday night, an allegedly drunk on-duty NYPD officer shot his partner in the wrist while the two were drinking at a restaurant in Queens.

Well, for those of you in NYC or going there for the weekend, good luck. You may be dodging more than raindrops if the cops keep on drinking in the town that never sleeps.

When I was growing up I took a trip with my older brother to New York City. While we were walking around and seeing the sights, I noticed for the first time a license plate that had the "DPL" imprinted on it. I had never seen that before, growing up in the suburbs of Boston. I wasn't exactly a rube, but I wasn't big city either -- at least at that time.

So my big bro pointed out that the initials indicated that these cars belonged to people in the diplomatic corps. They had immunity and could break the law at will and even flaunt it. That was my brother's take and he even pointed out that the DPL car we were looking at was parked in a red zone.

From that time forward, through my years living in major cities, I've noticed lots of DPL cars and maybe not surprisingly, they always were parked in no parking zones or with time expired on the meters. I guess that's because they don't have to pay to park like the rest of us.

In New York, Devyani Khobragade, a deputy consul general at the Indian Consulate in New York, was arrested on December 12 on charges of visa fraud and underpaying her housekeeper, an Indian national. She was released on a $250,000 bail.

In an email to colleagues, Khobragade complained of "repeated handcuffing, stripping and cavity searches, swabbing" and being detained in a holding cell with petty criminals despite her "incessant assertions of immunity".

In essence, this deputy consul was keeping an illegal slave. Let's just be honest here. And when she was subjected to the same treatment as the rest of Americans, her arrogance and immunity took over. She was demanding to be treated better than anyone else.

Maybe my brother was right. Being a diplomat means you can do anything to anyone and get away with any crime, large or small. That may be the way the government sees things, but if the NSA is going to eavesdrop on our calls and emails, maybe they need the power to hold possible criminals who are harboring sleeper cells on our soil.

I'm not saying Khobragade is running a sleeper cell or that her "slave" was a terrorist. But they could be. And this also could all be just one big misunderstanding. But we need to look at what diplomatic immunity really means. Can you come over here, kill an American citizen and just go back to your home country? Actually yes. And it's happened before with Soviet drunk drivers killing pedestrians and all they got was expelled back to their country. The dead victims didn't get to go home. They got planted six feet under. No charges were levied.

In early 2005, Virginia police closed in on a suspected child predator — a man in his 40s who cops say drove four hours to meet a 13-year-old girl he’d met on the Internet, promising to teach her about sex. It turned out the girl was really a cop, and officers arrested the man at a shopping mall.

But then it was the police who got an unpleasant surprise. Their suspect, Salem Al-Mazrooei, was a diplomat from the United Arab Emirates — and therefore covered by “diplomatic immunity.” The cops had to let him go. Days later, Al-Mazrooei left the country, never having spent a night in jail.

Now back to the current crisis. The government of India has it tighty-whities all up in a bunch. They're taking retaliatory steps against the US embassy in India. They've taken down the protective barricades which keep our diplomatic corps over there safe.

The measures included a revision of work conditions of Indians employed at U.S. consulates and a freeze on the import of duty-free alcohol.

You know they mean business when they freeze the import of duty-free alcohol.

It's about time we get real here. Respect and privacy are one thing to grant visiting dignitaries. But freedom to overtly break our human rights laws, to become general parking scofflaws and to commit horrific human crimes is not above the law for us, or for them.

So India, spend a bit more time thinking about why you're defending a slave holder and less on making the US presence on your land less safe.

And Obama -- maybe you need to get John Kerry off the plane a little longer to look at the way we are protecting law breakers here under the guise of diplomatic immunity.

There's a lot of tragedy in the New York City area recently. The horrific train derailment is getting most of the attention. I say most because strangely, it didn't seem to matter to outgoing Mayor Micheal Bloomberg. According to WPIX, Channel 11 in NYC:

According to a report by The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg was spotted playing golf at Bermuda’s Mid Ocean golf club. Even after hearing about the tragedy, Bloomberg allegedly kept playing.

So much for the caring Mayor Bloomy. He must have had some great round going to ignore a catastrophe that took four lives and injured 63 others.

Also on his watch, but really only making the news headlines this week is the story of Kalief Browder. If the name doesn't ring a bell, that's because he's just an average, poor, black teenager. In 2010, at the age of 16, he was walking home from a party in the Bronx when police officers stopped and arrested him. Browder was told by the officers he'd probably be freed later that night. Instead, Browder would go on to spend three birthdays on Rikers Island Correctional Institution.

Being a 16-year-old in prison with adult men, Browder feared for his life because of prison gangs, extortion and violent prison guards.

During his incarceration, Browder said, he missed his sister's wedding and never got a chance to attend his prom or graduate from high school.

Why did this happen? All because his family couldn't raise the $10,000 bail to set him free. Or maybe even more basically, because the stop and frisk rules Bloomberg put into effect. In what was supposed to decrease crime, actually was a commitment of a crime in and of itself against people of color. Racial profiling.

It's really impossible to know for sure why the police even stopped this boy because he never got a trial and was never convicted of a crime. So the best reason available with the evidence in front of us is that this is random racism. Three years and four suicide attempts later, Browder was finally given a chance to walk. All he has to do is plead guilty of a burglary crime he maintains he had no part in and the door to his freedom would become open.

He refused. He wouldn't cop to a guilty plea when he was totally innocent.

Then the unthinkable happened. They set him free anyway. No trial. No restitution. No apology. No nothing.

Here's his remarkable story.Sadly though, its the story of Mayor Bloomberg, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly and the gestapo state of affairs for people of color. The Republican party may proclaim that racism ended with Rosa Parks, but the truth is it didn't end then and Kalief Browder's case shows it hasn't ended yet.